Apparently you guys don't care about quality loss, but I do. Even if it's just a little, I don't like it. That's one of the reasons why I'd rather buy a movie on Blu-ray and why I upgrade some of my DVD movies to Blu-ray. I want to watch my movies and shows in the best quality I can.

And my friend, if you're insisting that DVD is out and h264 is in, you're wrong. BLU-RAY is the new thing!! And as far as I'm concerned, all Blu-ray players play DVDs. So as long as Blu-ray players are around, then my DVDs are playable.

So, if you want to "get with the times," then ditch h254 and buy Blu-ray instead.

You do know that Blu-ray actually uses h264 as video codec, right? It's just usually at a very high bitrate. If we're talking shady downloads you'll notice that, depending on where you get it, a movie can range from 700MB for a recode to 40GB for a direct copy of the Blu-ray. But both are h264. Just encode at high enough quality and you won't have any quality loss.

So if you want to "get with the times", just convert everything into h264. It's been the most important codec out there for a while and it will remain the most important codec for the next few years too. And then we'll switch to HEVC (h265).

We are talking DVD quality here -- it LOOKS LIKE CRAP in the first place And your worried about quality loss??? Your out of your mind

Sigh! You don't get it, don't you? Yes, DVD has quality loss. So, why push the quality loss even further by making another conversion??

I do find it funny how you tell me that I waste my time authoring DVDs, yet you have no problem telling me to waste my time converting my HUNDREDS of DVDs into h264. Do you realize how time consuming that will be? Why bother wasting the time converting my DVD collection when there are still plenty of DVDs in the market and will still be some available within the next several years?

You do know that Blu-ray actually uses h264 as video codec, right? It's just usually at a very high bitrate. If we're talking shady downloads you'll notice that, depending on where you get it, a movie can range from 700MB for a recode to 40GB for a direct copy of the Blu-ray. But both are h264. Just encode at high enough quality and you won't have any quality loss.

So if you want to "get with the times", just convert everything into h264. It's been the most important codec out there for a while and it will remain the most important codec for the next few years too. And then we'll switch to HEVC (h265).

Another sigh!! You also don't get it. Blu-ray is transferred directly from film. You guys are asking me to convert a DVD, which already has enough quality loss as it is, and further degrade the quality by making another conversion. Blu-ray movies are not ripped DVD movies. They are brand new transfers done directly from film.

Won't using high enough bitrate while using h264 result in no quality loss?

You guys must get commission on these media player sales. You guys are just too pushy. I'm simply asking for an Mpeg joiner software and this has turned into a "buy a media player" thread. What the hell??

Well, if you even had a minimal technical understanding of how MPEG2 (and most other video codecs) works you'd know that you can't just join two video files without either converting it or getting image errors. Not every frame is stored entirely, you have keyframes every X frames, all the other frames are differential. They only contain information about what changed with regards to the previous frame. Now if you just cut and paste video files together you'll start getting differentials for the wrong keyframes, causing horrible image errors. It is impossible to fix without at least minimal re-encoding because of limitations in MPEG2.

You should have a look at this guide: http://ffmpeg.org/tr...64EncodingGuideBasically it means that if you convert using Handbrake with Constant Quality (instead of constant bitrate etc) and you put it high enough you will achieve lossless conversion. I don't know if you know lossless, but it means there will not be any quality loss at all. What you do with those files afterwards is your call, but converting them back to MPEG2 would indeed reduce the quality, especially since MPEG2 is just vastly inferior to h264.

And seriously, you think that if you record something from your TV to a DVD recorder the quality is so good you'll notice any difference? What input does your DVD recorder take, SCART? We are here trying to help you achieve something in the best possible way since you can't do it. When we explain why it doesn't work the way you want and we offer you pretty good alternatives you get rude and act as if we're idiots not understanding you. We do understand you, but if you refuse to at least look into the reasons why we're telling you what we're telling you then we can't really help you.

Well, if you even had a minimal technical understanding of how MPEG2 (and most other video codecs) works you'd know that you can't just join two video files without either converting it or getting image errors.

-snip-

When we explain why it doesn't work the way you want and we offer you pretty good alternatives you get rude and act as if we're idiots not understanding you. We do understand you, but if you refuse to at least look into the reasons why we're telling you what we're telling you then we can't really help you.

Actually, nobody here ever told me it was impossible. People gave me the impression that it was possible but that you guys refuse to help me because my method is too "old school."

I just want to share the good news that I finally bought a media player and so far, I'm liking it. However, I do find it a bit odd how people here criticize me for not having one, yet when I finally give in and ask a question about a particular media player on THIS thread, there are zero responses. Anyways, I decided to buy it anyway since the reviews at Amazon were positive overall. I only had the player for a day, but so far, I'm very happy with it. Now, I can watch my MP4 and DivX videos on my TV. I have a lot of digital videos that have remained unwatched because sitting in front of a desk watching on a computer is not something I prefer to do.